A/N- So I've failed to update my other story because I am currently enthralled in the Kalijah of this one.
I am a horrible person.
Unrelated: There is a Delena fanfic out there somewhere where Damon kills Elena's parents on Christmas Eve when she's a toddler and then involves himself in her and Jeremy's life, I lost the story but if anyone knows the title or the author can you please tell me! I've been unable to find it despite my best efforts.
Despite what the doctor tells Damon, not all the hours and days Katherine spends sleeping are fake. She is truly exhausted, physically, emotionally, psychologically. She was dead for a week and her body is using most of its energy collaborating with Skye's magic to regenerate dead muscle and tissue. She's also a fifteenth century human trying to survive in a twenty-first century world, her body is constantly fatiguing itself fighting off diseases that it has no immunity to.
Besides, her slumber is her protection. Elijah does not confront her whilst she is unconscious, he does not make demands of her, attempt to trick or deceive her, nor does he explain his motives for returning to Mystic Falls after he unmistakeably abandoned her.
Whilst she sleeps she is safe.
The darkness protects her and allows her time, time to recover and time to plan.
It is a shield between her and Elijah, one she hides behind every night when the Original hangs up his jacket, removes his shoes, undoes his cuffs and climbs into bed beside her, he tries to intrude upon her darkness with sweet nothings whispered in her ear. He promises love and devotion as the memory of him screaming hatefulness at the Quarry wars with the imagery of him chasing her through the woods like an animal and both dance behind her flickering eyelids.
Can she trust a single word he says when he's betrayed and abandoned her so often?
Her treacherous heart begins beseeching her to wake up, to open her eyes and embrace this new world of light and happiness.
It is only seconds away from triumph as the antique clock ushers in Wednesday's midnight and Elijah is running his hands through her locks, playing with the strands and murmuring half-forgotten sonnets from the golden days when he chased her through the sun soaked garden. She is moments away from turning in his arms and surrendering to his embrace when his phone starts beeping from the nightstand. He releases her with a sigh and climbs to his feet with obvious reluctance.
"Little brother" Elijah answers the phone with the endearment typical of the Original family,
"I know I've been away for over a week, like you I am perfectly capable of keeping time by a Gregorian calendar…no I am not on holiday…really Niklaus Erik is your son are you completely incapable of caring for him that you constantly need me there?!"
So it was a boy? Perfect, because the world really needed a testosterone riddled male for the Hybrid to spoil and mould into Klaus 2.0.
Elijah sighed and Katherine heard him pace the room, "Forgive me brother I did not mean to snap…I know you love him…I do yes, I have simply encountered complications in my quest to reach Katerina…no I haven't lost her, in fact I am looking at her now…I can't…she's human now Niklaus, I'm being cautious about her ability to travel…yes I will come home as soon as I can…yes I will bring her with me"
No.
Not again.
Katherine wonders if her heart will ever stop breaking. If one day it will simply suffer too much agony and turn to stone.
Five hundred years of pain and grief suggest otherwise but she holds out hope.
Because the stupid Bulgarian peasant girl once again allowed her head to be turned by Elijah's chivalry and empty words and now she finds herself hours away from being bundled up and shipped to New Orleans to be a blood bag and breeding cow for Klaus.
Always and Forever.
Always and forever alone.
Her plans change drastically after that. She plots and waits until Elijah finally leaves for the quarry to fulfil his part of the bargain, she's been eavesdropping on Elena and Damon's tense conversations for days and she knows that neither of them will be capable of focusing on anything but their own thoughts. She calculates the amount of time in her head required to free Stefan from his watery grave- assuming that Elijah drives at the speed limit, as he always does and assuming her luck is bad enough that he shan't run into Silas or any complications, she has just over an hour to get away.
She's done more with less.
Katherine sneaks into Damon's bedroom and helps herself to Elena's clothes, going straight past the dresses for a pair of jeans and flat boots, she's human now, so her days of running in heels are temporarily over. She grabs a random t-shirt and pulls it over her head, glad that Elijah had provided her with her own lingerie. Elena might be her doppelganger but until she gave birth her hips and breasts would always be smaller than Katherine's.
She tiptoes back to her room just as a car pulls into the drive, she waits breathlessly and could almost cry with happiness when she realises that it's Caroline Forbes. Holding her breath and biting her lips she unlocks the window and sends up a prayer that it won't resist.
God bless Damon and his obsessive cleanliness. He's kept the wood polished and the hinges oiled.
She slips on her boots and sits on the window ledge, the kitchen is below her which means there is a roof for her to climb onto, after that it's a six foot drop to the ground. Not ideal but it could be worse.
Bending her knees and crouching on impact helps her body absorb some of the shock, she checks the expensive watch she acquired from Damon and sees that she has about forty minutes left.
Running through the woods takes her twenty minutes, breaking into her own house takes her three.
She'd collected a vast assortment of clothes and knick knacks during the summer, she always did whenever Klaus lulled her into a false sense of security, she loved to put down roots, she'd even started growing a rose bush in the backyard.
To hell with all of it.
She ran upstairs to her bedroom and grabbed her spare wallet and her passport. Anything else would have slowed her down.
She was in her car and planning on gunning it all the way to Texas when she drove past the bus station and had a better idea.
Car theft was much more difficult for a human than a vampire.
But tracking one human amongst thousands spread out over hundreds of bus routes?
She left the keys behind the dashboard and bought herself a one-way ticket to San Antonio, with any luck her car would be stolen and Elijah would track that before looking elsewhere for her.
If he looked for her at all and didn't give her up as a lost cause before returning home to his sweet little spawn of Satan.
No, she decided as she grabbed herself a window seat, curled up and tried not to think about the thirty eight hour trip ahead of her.
Clearly she didn't have that much luck.
Its Friday morning when she touches down in Mexico City, exhausted and feeling filthy, she's barely out the airport doors when her contact grabs her,
"Katerina!" he whistles her name like it's a byword for party, she gives him a disdainful glance through grainy eyes, "Pedro, ¿Cómo estás?"
He grins and wraps an arm about her waist, leading her to a ridiculously flashy convertible that she would crash if she was still a vampire,
"Bueno, Bueno. But what happened to you senorita? Last time we met was…"
"When you brought down the Aztec empire," she reminds him candidly as she slides into the passenger seat, he winces and checks his sunglasses in the rear-view mirror,
"I don't miss those days let me tell you, nothing like luxury and modernity to make you glad of immortality" he laughs and glances at her as she shifts in her seat.
He can tell she's human again, of course he can tell, she looks and smells human.
"What can I do for you Katerina?" he inquires as he speeds through the streets with not even a thought for the traffic around him, she sighs and rolls her neck,
"I need you to take me to the cenote in Chichen Itza" she reveals and he raises his eyebrows,
"You picked an interesting time of year to go sightseeing" he jests and she raises her arm over her head, wrapping around the headrest and turning to face him,
"You and I both know I'm not there to sightsee"
She doesn't take her eyes off him until he's typed in the co-ordinates on his G.P.S and is navigating their way to Yucatan. He doesn't speak for a while and Katherine takes the opportunity to relax and rehydrate with the bottle of water she swiped from the airplane. She didn't have time to get cash out back in Texas and she doesn't trust Elijah not to have caught up to the digital age and trace her card. She would have to borrow some money from Pedro,
He cleared his throat as he ran a red light, "You know, you haven't told me what's in this for me" he points out.
On second thought, maybe she'd have to risk an a.t.m
She sighs, "Name your price" she concedes and he gives her a lascivious grin before reaching over and stroking her thigh, "Katerina" he croons and she slaps his hand away.
"Name your reasonable price" she amends, knowing he was testing her but feeling irritated anyway.
She was sick to death of the men in her life.
He chuckles and puts his hand back on the steering wheel, "Well if I had to choose one thing…"
"The suspense is killing me" she announces drolly, trying to find a comfortable position in the leather seat. A fourteen hour drive would get them to their destination just before midnight, provided they make only the bare minimum of stops required.
"I want Moctezuma's amulet" he demands, "I know you stole it from Cortes and I want it"
She rolls her eyes but secretly is glad that's all he's asking for, she can afford to surrender this treasure considering what she's getting out of the bargain.
"Done"
Three hours later they stop at a gas station to refuel and she bullies him into buying her food and water whilst she uses the bathroom. She's halfway across the parking lot when she thinks she sees a vampire lurking in the shadows and jumps out of her skin before he steps into the sun and she realises he's just a stoned tourist.
Pedro unfortunately notices her twitchy behaviour.
"You know" he begins conversationally as they climb back into the car,
"I heard you have an Original on your tail"
She has another moment of panic before brushing it off, she's been on the run for five hundred years, it'd be a safe bet to use this lie and have her believe him,
"I usually do but this one will have some trouble finding me"
"I could make a deal with this Original," he muses aloud, trying to frighten her,
"Hand you over and get the amulet in the bargain,"
"You could" she allows "but this Original has been ambivalent towards me for a very long time and will keep me alive long enough for me to campaign for your very unpleasant death"
He doesn't take threats as well as she does and growls, turning his face to her without a second thought to the road before them, "I could kill you right now"
She doesn't even flinch but leans over and looks him straight in the eye, "There is a reason you and I fear Dia de Muertos, why neither of us are ever in Mexico for it, would you risk killing me knowing what we know?"
They fall into an uneasy silence after that, he turns out the radio to cover the tension but she focuses on trying to rest, which is impossible in this compact car. Her legs are cramped in the small space and the seat doesn't recline back, nor can she feel entirely safe going to sleep lest Pedro decides to go off-road and ditch her in some other part of Mexico
They arrive at Chichen Itza just after eleven at night and they have to race miles to get to the cenote. This underground well was built by the Mayans and twice a year the sun shone directly into the water, a feat that had archaeologists enamoured with the natural spring. What they had yet to discover however was that twice a year, a full moon would shine down onto the waters as well.
Katherine had been planning this trip for a while, ever since she realised that vampirism was a closed door for her.
They reach the cenote just before midnight and she's panting and clutching a stitch in her side as Pedro finds a rope leading down into the waters, the full moon the only light available
"You can either climb or jump" he tells her brusquely and she scoffs, contemplating how far down the water is "Give me the damn rope"
She slips out of her clothes and ignores Pedro's leer, "What do I have to do?" she asks nervously, sitting on the edge and wrapping her hand around the surprisingly clean and strong rope,
"Just swim in the waters at midnight" he assures her, "That's all I did, the moon and the magic should do the rest"
She takes a breath to steady her nerves and then slips over the edge, swinging wildly for an instant as the rope took her weight and she scrabbled for purchase. She exhaled and began climbing down the rope. She didn't even make it ten metres before her hands went red and by fifty they were blistered. She tried to go quickly but her hands were wet and stinging with sweat and sores,
"You have thirty seconds" Pedro shouted from above, "Katerina get in the water now"
She looked down, there was still so much rope left and it barely touched the water, but if she didn't do this now it'd be another six months.
And who knows if she had that long.
She closed her eyes and released the rope, freefalling the last one hundred metres into the well.
The impact drives the air from her lungs and the icy cold water shocks her, through foolish instinct she opens her mouth to breathe and finds herself struggling not to drown.
She forgot she's a terrible swimmer.
She kicks as quickly as she can and waves her arms to get back to the surface when she feels something warm wash over her. She opens her eyes and sees the whole cenote is lit by the moon, and it's glowing, she releases the last gust of air from her body but shockingly, she doesn't drown.
She's sinking now, slowly sinking down the deep well until her feet touch the bottom, standing there, her entire world consisting of clear aqua blue water and the dark cavern walls, she looks around for some more obvious sign of magic.
Nothing else comes.
She stands there until she sees something glimmer in a tiny niche in the rock wall, she kicks off the ground and swims towards it, the stunning silvery light it resonates grows stronger as she gets closer but as her hand reaches out it disappears.
She senses something above her head and looks up to see the shining object just above her head, she reaches out and it's just out of her grasp, she lunges for it and it vanishes. She frowns in annoyance but then spies it on a ledge across the cenote, swimming as quickly as she can her fingers manage to brush the silvery light before its gone.
She slaps the ledge in irritation and when she doesn't feel the stinging pain she expected brings her hand to her face, her blisters and scratches are gone.
The light darts between her legs and she spins in the water, following it as it lures her back to the surface, just before she breaks the waterline it drifts back down and lands on her left breast. She tentatively lifts her fingers to touch it, wondering if it's somehow sentient, but the closer her fingers get- the more the light sinks into her flesh.
It doesn't hurt, but when it has completely penetrated her flesh, her breast is glowing but the light grows dimmer the further it burrows inside her. She's curious as to what this magic is, but she's not afraid.
At least not until her heart stops.
She gasps and this time the water rushes into her lungs, thankfully she's so near the surface she can kick herself up into the fresh air and keep herself afloat while she coughs the water from her body.
But her temporary ability to breathe doesn't mean anything in light of the fact that her heart is dead in her chest. She clutches the flesh above the organ and through the red spots dancing in front of her eyes, manages to paddle over to a tiny recess where she hoists her upper body from the water and leans back, gasping and massaging her chest.
She feels the all too familiar darkness and coldness welcoming her back with open arms.
But she doesn't want deaths embrace, not now that she's danced in the pale moonlight and rediscovered the beauty of life.
If she dies for a second time in a week she'll be majorly pissed off.
"I want to live" she whispers to herself, even as her mind registers through the panic that this is an ironic choice for her last words. Her eyelids are feeling heavy but she refuses to close them, she wants the last thing she sees on this earth to be the moonlight shining on her pale knees as the water laps gently against her legs.
She determinedly dies with her eyes open. But when her heart starts beating once more and she violently gasps, her body thrashing as blood once again begins pumping through her veins, she falls from the ledge and shuts her eyes as she lands back in the water.
But this time she emerges laughing, she feels electric. She runs her hands through her hair and even her roots and nails seem to be tingling with life.
"Katerina!"
She raises her head and can see Pedro's face over the edge of the cenote. "You have to get out now"
She doesn't want to leave the water, she feels magnificent, amazing and so full of life but he is calling her name repeatedly and his tone is thick with anxiety. So with a sigh she swims over to the rope and begins hauling herself up. This time her hands don't blister and her skin doesn't break, she climbs up with ease and throws her accomplice and pleasant smile when he helps her back onto the surface.
"I feel great" she giggles, staring up at the night sky. She gasps when she discovers just how well she can see the stars shining above her, even as a vampire her sight didn't gift her with this much detail. She scrambles to her feet and takes the towel that Pedro hands her, not even asking where he got it from, the world is full of gifts and this is just another one.
"I can see so much and so far" she states, "I can hear the wind in the trees from miles away"
"You learn to block that out" he informs her ungraciously, she ignores his attitude, he can't ruin her elation there is nothing that can destroy her happiness. She raises her arms over her head and spins around laughing happily.
"El Castillo" she blurts out when she stops, "I want to go thank the gods for this"
He catches her arm before she runs far, "You want to put on your clothes first?"
She looks down and chuckles when she sees that she's still completely naked. "Okay"
She throws on the t-shirt and jeans, not bothering with her lingerie and carrying her boots in her hand as she raced across the grass towards the pyramid. The wind ran through her wet hair, the grass tickled her feet and the little rocks stub her toes but there has never been anything as wonderful as this.
She drops her boots at the base of the pyramid and not even winded, began the steep climb to the top. She pauses at the entrance to the ancient temple and bows her head in reverence, even after so many hundreds of years the temple still houses stone carvings of the gods. She cautiously steps inside and kneels before one of the statues, she doesn't know who it is but she feels respect and gratitude,
"Thank-you" she whispers and when her knee registers the pain of a sharp rock she scoops it up and presses it to her palm, dragging it across the skin until it breaks and droplets of her blood patter onto the ground before the statue as token of her appreciation.
She is smiling when she steps back into the night, she looks up at the burning stars and planets and the full moon. She breathes deep and glances about for Pedro.
She sees Elijah first.
A/N- Pedro is based on the historical figure Pedro de Alvarado who was a lieutenant under Cortes during the conquest of Mexico.